My first visit to Paris took place at the beginning of my professional life as a photographer.
I was eager to meet photographers, who inspired me when started up in Poland. Within days I had breakfast with Guy Bourdin, at Vogue and that same week visited famous Magnum Agency, run by photographers.
Marc Riboud took care of me there, explained how the Agency works, introduced me to Josef Koudelka and a few other people, who made that iconic agency to be the best in the world.
Not a long time ago, when I was living in Wales for a while, I visited Tintern, a small village in Wye Valley, which is a home to an extraordinary photographer, David Hurn, also a member of the Magnum Agency, photographer who was in the heart of what was happening in sixties and seventies on both sides of Atlantic.
We drank coffee and we talked about photographers.
David’s stories, rich in wonderful encounters, were fascinating and also brought to my mind portraits of The Beatles, when they were filming “A Hard Day’s Night”, images, which I displayed in my bedroom, when I was a teenager.
Just before I took this portrait of David Hurn, he said, “All good photographers are honest, sincere and kind. Otherwise they cannot be good photographers”.
I cannot agree more.